"History never repeats itself, but it does rhyme."
- Mark Twain
I have opted for History as a core subject at college. I love my course, and a lot of that love has developed because I love my teacher. She is not a professor. She is fireworks in flesh. She is the reason my eyes have begun hating me and loving me, when I watch History Channel in the middle of the night, with ear-phones on and the living-room lights switched off. And yesterday night, while I was watching something on the Inquisition (ironically started by a person called Pope Innocent III) and Witch-Hunting, it struck me that History has taught me to be humble.
When I would read about things like the Holocaust, the Dark Ages or the the terrible, terrible condition of peasants during the French Revolution I'd think, "I could've shown them a thing or two about how to run the country; they handled things so badly. I could've shown them how to resolve conflicts on the ownership of resources, or how to develop efficient infrastructure, or how to draw public policies, or how to manage public dissent. Were I there, things could have been handled so differently. I could have shown them the way to do it right, and prevent so many catastrophic consequences. Things would have been so incredibly different." Then I stepped down from my pedestal, but just a bit to think, maybe not me but at least any capable leader of my time.
And then it hit me - were it not for History, I wouldn't have known anything at all about these things.
Indeed, these concepts wouldn't exist.
History gives us a chance at something which always seems to be just out of our reach - the future. We can't rewind the tape and live it all over again, no matter how differently we would and no matter how hard we want to. But what we can do, is learn some useful lessons from the past and change where we're going to.
- Mark Twain
I have opted for History as a core subject at college. I love my course, and a lot of that love has developed because I love my teacher. She is not a professor. She is fireworks in flesh. She is the reason my eyes have begun hating me and loving me, when I watch History Channel in the middle of the night, with ear-phones on and the living-room lights switched off. And yesterday night, while I was watching something on the Inquisition (ironically started by a person called Pope Innocent III) and Witch-Hunting, it struck me that History has taught me to be humble.
When I would read about things like the Holocaust, the Dark Ages or the the terrible, terrible condition of peasants during the French Revolution I'd think, "I could've shown them a thing or two about how to run the country; they handled things so badly. I could've shown them how to resolve conflicts on the ownership of resources, or how to develop efficient infrastructure, or how to draw public policies, or how to manage public dissent. Were I there, things could have been handled so differently. I could have shown them the way to do it right, and prevent so many catastrophic consequences. Things would have been so incredibly different." Then I stepped down from my pedestal, but just a bit to think, maybe not me but at least any capable leader of my time.
And then it hit me - were it not for History, I wouldn't have known anything at all about these things.
Indeed, these concepts wouldn't exist.
History gives us a chance at something which always seems to be just out of our reach - the future. We can't rewind the tape and live it all over again, no matter how differently we would and no matter how hard we want to. But what we can do, is learn some useful lessons from the past and change where we're going to.
hmm, that's an important thing to remember... sometimes we waste soo much time dwelling over things that have past and waste our time in the now when we could be doing differently...
ReplyDeleteAfterall life is a learning process...
love you vini and love your blog!
piu
Thanks.
ReplyDeleteAnd with the holidays on, this whole business of wasting time even when you're in the now is just downright lazy.